Elastic Solutions for Masonry-like Panels

The problem of equilibrium for normal elastic no-tension materials can be formulated as a minimum problem for the complementary energy functional over the set of statically admissible stress fields H. Masonry facades are often formed by an assembly of units in the form of rectangular panels. A special class of mixed boundary value problem for such units is solved by minimizing the complementary energy over the subset H˜ of H defined by the admissible stress fields that are of rank one. These minimal uniaxial stress states are often the exact solutions of such BVP’s as verified by deriving the corresponding fracture strains through the compatibility equations and checking the boundary conditions for the associated displacements. The novelty of the proposed approach, besides the generality of the formulation leading to the uniaxial stress solution (i.e., the compression ray distribution) in all the possible combinations of given rigid displacements of the bases, resides in the analytical description of the associated anelastic strain.